Finally reading Nancy Milford’s biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Savage Beauty (a gift sent by my friend Chris, to whom I owe a good three or four letters). Here, the biographer is speaking of her early, delicate negotiations with the late poet’s sister, owner of Edna’s estate:
There were only three things she said she’d destroyed. One was a letter returned to her by a no-longer-young man to whom Edna had written. Norma said it was indiscreet. Edna described his physical beauty in detail and made what she wanted clear. He was homosexual. Norma said, “Maybe she didn’t care. Anyway, he turned her down. We can’t have that.” There was an ivory dildo, which Norma admitted was difficult to burn, but she’d managed. And there was a set of pornographic photographs, taken, she thought, about the same time as the nude photographs from Santa Fe in 1926 or 1927, when Millay was writing her libretto, The King’s Henchman, for the Metropolitan Opera. These were of Eugen and Edna, she said. Some were taken down at the pool, perhaps shot by Eugen using a timing device on his camera. Norma guessed that Arthur Davison Ficke had a hand in shooting them. “Vincent was already a famous poet, how could she have let these photographs of her be taken? Well, she did. Naughty Vincent Millay! I found them, and I destroyed them. For her own good! You can put that down!”
- Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. New York: Random House, 2001, xv-xvi.
